Through the Kaleidoscope Viewing the Contributions of the Behavioral and Social Sciences to Health -- The Barbara and Jerome Grossman Symposium (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Early Childhood Interventions: Theories of Change, Empirical Findings, and Research Priorities
Early Childhood Interventions: Theories of Change, Empirical Findings, and Research Priorities
Pages 16-23
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From page 16... ...
Model programs provide credible evidence that we have the capacity to intervene effectively, but successful demonstration projects typically "have different characteristics from the full range of interventions that are actually delivered when promising programs are brought to scale." 16
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From page 17... ...
Shonkoffindicated that his remarks would focus on early childhood intervention as a prototype to serve "as a heuristic model for thinking more broadly about how we might approach behavioral and social interventions across different ages and venues." Early childhood intervention, he said, is a useful model because it rests on a sound theoretical framework, builds on a strong experimental base, and provides promising foundations for a life-span strategy because of its prevention orientation. Effective interventions in the early childhood years have a number of distinguishing features, Dr.
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From page 18... ...
Most traditional models of early childhood intervention are not well designed to address significant family problems that can have major adverse impacts on child well-being. "Family violence, substance abuse, and parental mental illness, particularly maternal depression, are three common examples," Dr.
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From page 19... ...
Shonkoff underscored "the need to change the highly politicized context in which intervention programs are evaluated, which results in a high-stakes environment that undermines honest attempts to improve quality." He noted that evaluators and service providers often underplay evidence of ineffective services and overstate the extent to which programs do work. Alternatively, Dr.
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From page 20... ...
If we want to change peoples' diets, their level of physical activity, or other lifestyle factors, Dr. Chesney said, "It is not like a bacterial infection, for which one could administer five sessions of health counseling like an antibiotic and expect that the unhealthy dietary habits or the physical inactivity would be 'cured.' Changing behavior is more like managing diabetes; .
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From page 21... ...
Over the past decades, "downstream" interventions consisting of individual counseling and group smoking cessation programs have improved quit rates. At the same time, "midstream" interventions worked to prevent smoking initiation and to encourage smoking cessation with school-based, work site, and community programs.
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From page 22... ...
In the first group, people in participating community health centers received the Treatwell 5-A-Day series of 10 interventions aimed at improving diet in general and increasing their intake of fruits and vegetables in particular, and they were exposed to annual campaigns in nutrition education. In addition, health center staff actively worked with them to make changes in their work site that would increase the availability of healthy foods in snack rooms, vending machines, and throughout the work setting.
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From page 23... ...
"Here we do have growing evidence that psychosocial interventions, which target coping skills and provide social support, can contribute to treatment, particularly in chronic disease management," she said. "These interventions, which are typically individual- and group-based, also need now to move from the downstream level to midstream and upstream .
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